Explore: Historical perspectives on China’s environment

Over the past two decades, as the environmental damage and threats to public health generated by China’s rapid economic development have grown ever more alarming, Chinese environmental history has emerged as a dynamic and expansive field of research. Environmental historians are concerned with showing the myriad ways in which past human actions have altered China’s environment, as well as how that changing environment has shaped and conditioned Chinese history.

The aim of chinadialogue’s new environmental history series will be to introduce some of the most cutting-edge academic research on the environmental history of China and highlight its contemporary significance.

Given China's demographic and economic weight, what happens to the Chinese environment has always been, and will continue to be, of critical importance to the Earth's environment as a whole. And to fully comprehend China's contemporary environmental challenges we have to recognise that current problems result from a complex interplay between recent developments and patterns with deeper roots in China's past. Those legacies will shape the options available to China and the world as we grapple with our mounting global ecological crisis.

By offering historical perspectives on the origins of China’s contemporary environmental realities, articles featured in this series will enrich our understanding of issues that are at the heart of global efforts towards the goals of sustainable and equitable development.

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